


expectations

by wbtrashking (orphan_account)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Modern AU, Slow Build, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-29
Updated: 2020-07-29
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:13:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25571146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/wbtrashking
Summary: He scuffs his shoes against the floor, the material worn with the marks of old scuffles and rips from training. “This is stupid,” he mutters to no one, venting his frustration into the void.The answer to the silent question ofwhat, exactly, is so stupid, Felix,lies in the dark depths of his heart, feelings bottled up so thoroughly that he’ll likely never let them spill out of his mouth as long as he lives.Felix has complicated feelings about his childhood friends. It takes time for him to sort them out.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd/Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 8
Kudos: 73





	expectations

**Author's Note:**

> idk how i always start writing for porn and wind up fukken wasted with feelings. smh,,
> 
> ♠ **slight content warnings** : depression mentions, suicidal/intrusive thoughts, kidnapping, coping mechanisms, etc. ♠
> 
> i hope you enjoy the read! ♡♡♡

Felix scuffs his shoes against the floor, the material worn with the marks of old scuffles and rips from training. “This is stupid,” he mutters to no one, venting his frustration into the void.

The answer to the silent question of _what, exactly, is so stupid, Felix,_ lies in the dark depths of his heart, feelings bottled up so thoroughly that he’ll likely never let them spill out of his mouth as long as he lives.

Felix is a lot of things. The sharp-witted second son of a widowed millionaire, though his father had not come into rights of the fortune through his own merit. The younger brother of a hypercompetent man, one who smiles easily, charms all those he meets with ease. The childhood confidant to the young heir of Gautier Industries, a company much smaller but no less renowned than the one his father belongs to, and the Blaiddyd Corporation’s scion, the family which _his_ family merrily reports to.

He is not, however, good at tactfully expressing himself in any way, shape, or fashion. Furthermore, his relationship with his father is strained, at best, and nobody seems to give a damn if he snaps his teeth at them, thrusting his épée in the air, sweat dripping down his brow. The reasons for his foul mood are numerous in volume, but at the moment, he is the angriest about the complicated emotions brewing in his chest when he thinks about his oldest friends.

He has known Sylvain and Dimitri for as long as he can remember, the two of them always taller than him, another point of ire on his increasingly long list of things that get under his skin. Sylvain, at least, has the excuse of being older than him.

His movements through his footwork are automatic, attacking, cutting, advancing, and retreating, keeping a wide array of techniques in his arsenal. It’s easier, with the weight of the blade in his hands, not to think about the teasing glint in Sylvain’s brown eyes, or about the storm that’s always brewing behind Dimitri’s cloudy blue one. There’s no time for butterflies in his stomach or awkward revelations when he’s preparing for a coupé or a flèche from a skilled opponent.

It’s only when his brother emerges from his room to peek his head into the gym that Felix peels off his sweaty mask, his hair beginning to come loose from its tight bun. “You’re late for dinner,” Glenn says, his tone both amused and reproachful. He doesn’t come to the house very often, and he’s expected to dine with his father and brother when he _is_ home, much to his contempt.

Felix is not good at pretending to get along with his father, unlike Glenn, and he takes no pleasure in playing the fool for Rodrigue. “I need a shower,” he says, ignoring his sibling’s veiled reprimand, moving to wipe the handle of his épée clean.

“It’s been ages, Felix,” Glenn says. He doesn’t pander overly-much, refusing to put a hand on his brother’s shoulder, as much as he would like to. He knows how much Felix would hate it. “Please, for me?”

Glenn enjoys the song and dance, the façade of a happy home life. He is their father’s golden child, after all, and the glue barely holding their ill-fitted pieces together, besides. Felix closes his eyes with a grimace to avoid looking at his pleading gaze. “I’ll make it a quick one.”

He releases a breath, and Felix knows Glenn is smiling even without turning around. “Thank you,” his older brother says, sweeping out of the gym in silence.

Felix kicks the wall before he heads to the bathroom.

Annoyingly, the thought of dining with his family has distracted him from other horrid thoughts more thoroughly than his training regimen.

* * *

The worst part of all this is that Felix doesn’t know when this whole confusing mess began.

He’s always been mature for his age, keenly, forcibly aware of the necessity of niceties and avoiding faux-pas from the very nature of being born wealthy. Glenn had been more a father to him than Rodrigue, the man who is responsible for passing on his genes to Felix, teaching his little brother about the slippery ins and outs of the social elite.

Since the moment Felix’s mother had died from inexplicable heart failure when Felix had been five, he has been inordinately cognizant of the slimy ploys from distant relatives and family ‘friends’ making a move for the coveted position next to Rodrigue Fraldarius, right hand to the man who runs the continent of Fódlan in everything but name.

It is ugly business, pandering to the whims of middle-aged old women trying to butter him and Glenn up, and Felix learns to wield words as weapons, staving them off and cutting them down to the quick in a matter of minutes. Rodrigue is appalled by his behavior, making excuses for Felix’s acidity, but quietly, Felix believes Glenn is grateful.

They’re still grieving over their mother. The fact that these women won’t give them to time to do even _that_ without scrambling to rise above their stations is nauseating. Felix quickly begins to resent his father from that point on, the man who is so busy with keeping the air of propriety about him that he doesn’t make time to whisper words of comfort to his now-motherless children.

 _I’ll never get married_ , Felix decides right then and there, and he carries the words inside of his chest with the grim air of finality from the tender age of five. There’s no expectation on his shoulders, anyhow, what with Glenn blessed—or doomed, depending on who you ask and how the story is spun—to inherit the Fraldarius fortune and the coveted position as the Vice President of the Blaiddyd Corporation.

He’s comfortable in his decision, almost frighteningly so. As the years pass, he learns to scare off the women seeking his attention who are really angling for his father’s money.

Felix doesn’t open up to many people, too wary of getting drawn into politics. After his mother dies, his once-burgeoning friend group boils down to two, the only two who have ever really mattered.

He supposes that he should probably hate Dimitri, for all that his father dotes upon that boy more heavily than he has ever cared for his second son, but strangely enough, Dimitri is a difficult person to hate.

When they first meet as babbling toddlers, he mistakes Dimitri for a girl. The blonde had simply shaken his head, offering Felix a shy smile. It’s not the first time such a thing has happened, and it won’t be the last. He, too, is an odd sort, far more withdrawn than the slew of nameless other playmates Felix has been forced to play with at preschool.

Sylvain is brash and he smiles too much, chattering on and on about nothing, two years older than them, thinking himself very wise. Felix figures out that it’s an act at the burial service, because Sylvain’s guard is down, and his eyes are gloomy, like the gaping hole his mother’s casket sinks into had been dug for him instead.

After the ceremony, Felix looks around, and there is a haunted air about Dimitri as well, the three of them mourning, but not for the loss of Felix’s mother, or at least, that is nothing the only thing they’ve lost.

It’s the first bastion of things to come.

Three boys, made men before their time.

It is as poetic as it is disturbing.

* * *

Sylvain gets worse, somehow, as they creep into the yawning sprawl of adolescence. “What we need to do, my fine friends, is have sex.”

Dimitri, who has just turned twelve, does not quite roll his eyes, far too well-trained to do so, but he comes close. “Sylvain, we are still children.”

“This is how boys become men, your highness,” Sylvain explains, his voice lilting and theatrical as he slings an arm across Dimitri’s shoulder. Sylvain has sprung up several inches, his chest beginning to grow broad, ginger curls falling into his sparkling eyes. Felix has no doubt that he’ll land them in trouble soon, for he has a silver tongue, and is far too clever for his own good. “We are all heirs to fortunes. What better time is there to learn how to please a lady?”

The thick lull of silence falls in the room, the three of them silently dreading the future Sylvain has hinted at. They’re cursed, all of them, to be wrangled into loveless marriages to protect the legacies of their forbearers’ machinations.

Felix is the first to break it, haughty and furious as he so often is these days. “I refuse to be treated like my father’s pawn,” he spits, every word coming out as a growl. “Nobody is in charge of my destiny except for _me._ Damn the Fraldarius fortune. It would only be sweeter if Glenn were to renounce his claim to our father’s seat in kind.”

Dimitri and Sylvain both look at him as if he has spoken the gospel. Belatedly, Dimitri giggles, attempting to stifle the sound behind a fist and failing miserably. His humor makes Felix flush and scowl, so he hurries to craft half-baked excuses for his unseemly reaction. “I do not mean to make light of your proclamation, Felix. Everything you said is all rather true to your nature, that’s all. I pray that nothing ever robs of you of your spirit.”

Similarly, a warm glow creeps across Sylvain’s face, and he smiles a real, genuine smile, the first Felix has seen from him in some time. “Me too. It’s nice, having someone like you around. Reminding us to be _normal_.”

Felix purses his lips to keep from retorting they’ll never be normal, because he doesn’t think his declaration would come off as inspiring as he would like for it to be.

He also, notably, does not examine the fluttering feeling in his stomach as his two dearest friends smile and joke with him for the afternoon, sloughing off Sylvain’s progressively more obscene ideas.

* * *

That same year, everything that Felix knows comes crashing down around him.

Dimitri and Sylvain are taken. When they are found, five days after disappearing from school while waiting for their respective escorts to arrive, they are different.

Felix is the first to see them when they’re allowed visitors, Sylvain laughing with a hideous bruise purpling across his freckled face, and Dimitri, too thin, sporting an ugly wound where his right eye used to be, mangled by burn scars and jagged edges from a blade.

It’s wrong, everything about this is wrong. Felix should have _been there_. He’d been biting his nails to the quick every night since the news broke, and he’s distraught to find out that Dimitri has been assigned a _bodyguard_.

A bodyguard just a few years older than him, but much broader than Felix can ever hope to be, with skin healthily dark from the sun and piercing blue-gray eyes.

He feels worse than he had when his mother died, a lifetime ago. Felix yearns to gather both of them in his arms, to cry against their chests, but Dimitri is so angry. _Livid_ is a better descriptor, really, the heat bubbling beneath the surface like magma roiling under the dirt. Likewise, Sylvain is obfuscating, refusing to divulge any potent details, except for one.

When Felix demands to know who hit Sylvain so that he can urge his father to prosecute the criminal responsible in court, the redhead stops speaking.

He always talks endlessly, about everything and nothing at all. It is how he copes with his own broken home, with a father who cares only about protecting his money, and a brother who is addicted to heroin. Because he says nothing, Felix, sharp as ever, reads between the lines.

Later, when Miklan is convicted, disgraced and disowned from the Gautier family, ironically enough, everything makes sense.

It’s always been said that the worst crimes are carried out by those closest to you.

* * *

Now, Felix is nineteen, and the food on the table looks overcooked because their au pair, Pauline, is away on vacation for two weeks. Typically, Glenn is content to idly chip away at their father’s vast resources to order food for them, but Rodrigue insists on remaining useful about the house.

He isn’t. If anything, Felix is a far superior chef, but there isn’t enough money in the world to convince him to cook for his father.

Years of training require him to bow his head as a formality, crudely greeting the man. Already, the porkchops have begun to grow cold in the dish, the mashed potatoes becoming stiff instead of fluffy. He grimaces as he makes his plate, and they say grace, because his father clings to religion for reasons that Felix will never understand.

After a few minutes of standoffish silence, Rodrigue speaks, clearing his throat. “So,” he says, his tone awkward and stilted, “have you heard from Dimitri or Sylvain recently?”

Felix grips his silverware tightly, sparing a moment to glare at his brother, who grimaces, caught. _Traitor._ “I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Felix flatly replies, his voice having grown deep in his teenage years.

It’s a stupid question to ask. Rodrigue is familiar with his son’s fastidious dedication to keeping an eye on them.

They all attend the same university now, with Sylvain only one year ahead of them because he took time off to help his father save his failing business. He has the mind for it, often telling his friends that it’s his gift and his curse.

“I suppose not,” Rodrigue mumbles, thumb toying with the handle of his fork. “It’s just,” he starts, and stops, perhaps thinking better of what he was going to say.

“Spit it out,” Felix demands. “I don’t want to be here having this conversation any more than you do.”

Glenn fixes his brother with a look, disappointed that things have become so sour so soon, but Rodrigue simply sighs, acutely aware of his fractured relationship with his youngest child. “There are rumors,” he says, cutting the meat into delicate pieces on the plate. “That Dimitri has committed acts of violence on campus. That Sylvain is helping him cover them up.”

Though Felix can’t believe such whispers have made it all the way up to his father’s ears, for what it’s worth, they _are_ true. “And?”

His father balks at this, suddenly growing stern. “You knew about this and you did nothing?”

“Next subject,” Felix says, his tone leaving no room for further discussion. It’s not a problem. Dimitri’s helping people, if anything, fighting off sex offenders in the black of night, disarming would-be predators prowling the city streets. The campus security guards have thanked him more than a few times for his service.

Rodrigue has flagged a little bit, some of the fight leaving him. “He has done nothing…untoward?”

Felix can’t help it—he laughs. “ _Dimitri_?” He only knows two sides of the blonde: his polite, withdrawn imitation of a perfect little choir-boy, and his brutish, vicious taste for violence. “Is there talk of a scandal at headquarters?” He tries, valiantly, to imagine Lambert begging Rodrigue to investigate this issue at length with his own child, who is closer to Dimitri than he will ever be. They’re alike in that way. Sons, estranged in their own homes.

“Not as such,” the man replies, which is code for yes.

Felix glowers. “He’s not _fucking_ anybody. There’s no cause for concern.”

Glenn chokes and Rodrigue sputters. For a moment, Felix is wickedly amused by their performative prudishness. He goes back to forcing the under-salted food into his mouth, washing it down with great swigs of water.

Before Felix leaves, Glenn is the one to ask the real questions, his tone hushed and private so their father doesn’t overhear. “You would know, wouldn’t you? If Dimitri took someone into his bed?”

Felix snarls, pivoting on his heel to leave so his brother doesn’t see the way color blooms across his cheeks at the insinuation.

* * *

Learning how to navigate Sylvain and Dimitri’s new personas in the aftermath of the kidnapping is an exercise in restraint. Felix is not very patient, and they are both pigheaded fools in their own right.

Dimitri, already a powerful boy, is all the more ridiculous as he grows like a weed, taller and broader now than both Felix and Sylvain. He has a bleeding heart, as he always has, but his voice carries in it more vitriol, as if daring anyone at their prim and proper little private school to start something with him. Dedue is a balm against his rage, smoothing over his problems with ease, and it makes the hair on the back of Felix’s neck stand on end.

He doesn’t despise Dedue, exactly. But Felix thinks _he_ should be the one guarding Dimitri’s back instead.

The thought strikes through him like a thunderbolt.

Felix has never wanted to serve as Dimitri’s most trusted advisor, playing the role of the gatekeeper, brushing off anyone attempting to clutter the future President and CEO’s desk with trivialities. He is as free-spirited as they come, bucking wildly against collars and chains and god-forsaken _titles_. He’s never wanted to be Dimitri’s loyal, unthinking dog, not like his father is Lambert’s.

A long time ago, he just wanted to be Dimitri’s friend.

Now, he’s not sure what he wants. To that affect, Sylvain is monstrously unhelpful. Felix scares off the busty young woman fervently toying with Sylvain’s hair when he asks for clarification, her wide hips scrambling from the position where she’d been saddling his thighs and rather shamelessly grinding against his groin in the gardens. Sylvain doesn’t have the decency to look abashed about it either, the royal pain in the ass.

There is something striking about him out here, hair tousled and breezily carefree. Maintaining his messy affairs gives him a modicum of control, having this sway over women, singing effusive praises until the dozens of them that have sucked his dick discover that they are not so exclusive as Sylvain once claimed. Felix doesn’t necessarily _like_ his behavior, but he doesn’t hate it, either.

They all do different things to cope.

“It’s because nobody sees him as you do, no?” Sylvain’s voice is full of whimsy and wisdom, a strange blend that he’s perfected over the years. “He tries to be something he’s not, for everybody else.”

He spots Dimitri out of the corner of his eye, the blonde quickly scurrying to his next class, forcing out a tight smile for those he crosses paths with. It grates on Felix’s nerves. “He’s like a lion pretending to be a housecat. I don’t understand how everyone else can be so blind.”

Sylvain hums. “Watching his back to protect him from others,” he muses. Felix frowns. “That’s a very different thing than shielding him from a bullet.”

 _I would do both_ , Felix thinks, stubbornly refusing to talk about the ugly thing that roars in his chest at the thought.

* * *

Despite his better judgement, Felix keeps thinking about what his brother said at dinner.

 _You would know, wouldn’t you_.

Would he, truly? Dimitri is not so readable to Felix as he once was.

He shakes his head. No point in dwelling over something so futile.

It’s a Monday morning, and Felix considers it his task to pull Dimitri out of whatever stupor he’s found himself in over the weekend to ensure that he attends his classes. No need for the whispers to grow louder, for the ignorant rich brats around them to spit more venom about the young Blaiddyd scion than they already have.

He doesn’t waste time knocking on the front door. He’s used Dimitri’s spare key to rouse the blonde from his slumber hundreds of times before, and he’ll do it hundreds more, given the rate of Dimitri’s rapidly-declining mental health. He briefly nods at Dedue, who opens his eye slightly to see Felix entering, saying nothing about his uninvited intrusion. He never says anything, really, except to Dimitri.

It’s a shock to find Sylvain, the master of the enticing women into his bedroom with his tongue, sinking his teeth into the tight muscle of Dimitri’s thigh. It’s unmistakable, what he was about to do to Dimitri, the blonde’s legs pushed up, face flushed, like maybe he’d just finished begging Sylvain to slide inside of him.

Felix reels back like he’s been burned, heart thudding in his chest. They turn to him, trapped, gridlocked. Before they can say a word, he stumbles out of the room, teeth clenched in silent horror. Dimitri and _Sylvain_. It hurts, in a way that little else has in his life. This is betrayal in the highest degree, this secret they’ve kept from him. How many times has Sylvain warmed Dimitri’s bed and Felix has been none the wiser?

Angrily, he brushes tears out of his eyes, bitter laughter echoing through the quad as he skips his courses and goes back to his apartment.

His father had been right.

How terribly delighted he would be to hear Felix admit it.

* * *

Garreg Mach University has a sprawling campus. It’s easy enough to avoid them.

He violently throws himself into his economics and biology lectures on Tuesday, spending the evening brutalizing any opponent who dares challenge him at the fencing gym. He’s so upset and he doesn’t even know _why_. It’s not as though Dimitri or Sylvain are forbidden from sleeping with each other, and he holds no claim over them, not even in the prospect of business.

He’d seceded from the competition for the position of Vice President of the Blaiddyd Corporation ages ago. There’s no _point_ in sustaining his ties with them. The three of them have been in limbo for seven long years, Felix mostly reduced to an outsider, reduced to keeping Dimitri breathing to protect his reputation, listening to Sylvain’s raunchy tales of conquest with a reluctant smile, warmed by the simplicity of him being alive and free while his brother rots in a cell.

But still. _Still_.

Leonie and Laurenz look at him with eyes full of pity as he pulls off his gear. The redhead is the first one to slap him on the back, the force of it stinging all the way down to his toes. “You look like shit,” she says, ever the pragmatist.

“Feel like shit,” Felix retorts, elbowing her indelicately in the side in retaliation. It’s like elbowing a brick wall, for all her taut abdominal muscle.

Lorenz prattles on about something high-brow and formal until he winds down to his point. “I find it unappealing to see the self-proclaimed star of the GMU’s fencing team appear so distraught.”

The only thing Felix proclaims to be is an asshole, fully aware that he is bristly and unforgiving to lazy strangers who try to join the team on a whim. “I’m sure you’ll get over it,” he mutters, rolling his eyes.

It turns into a thing for two weeks, people worrying about him. Sweet Annette, his funny little lab partner with a penchant for making up cute little songs about snacks, blinks her big blue eyes up at him, brow furrowed. Mercedes, Annette’s ditzy-looking girlfriend with surprisingly sharp insight, sees through Felix like he’s made of glass, but mercifully does not kick him while he’s down. Ashe and Ignatz, who hover around Dedue like he’s their patron saint, peek around the edges of buildings he’s known to haunt, too scared to get close, but not scared enough to keep from whispering about him loudly enough that Felix can hear.

 _Everything about this situation_ _sucks_ , he thinks, turning his phone on silent to more easily ignore the slew of bothersome texts and phone calls he’s been receiving since that fateful day.

Felix despises being made an outsider in the narrative of his own life, but he is blisteringly, achingly familiar with the feeling.

When he gets to his apartment, amazingly, Sylvain is waiting by his door.

It makes Felix furious. He’s fiercely protective of his space despite never giving an ounce of a damn about invading Dimitri’s. “What,” he spits the word out, digging in his pockets for his keys.

“We didn’t want you to find out like that,” Sylvain explains, his tone decidedly somber. He’s not joking or laughing, or doing any of the things he does when he wants to be distracted, to forget about all of his problems, if only for an hour.

Felix’s hand stills on the knob. “You didn’t want me to find out,” he corrects, pointedly staring straight ahead, refusing to give Sylvain the satisfaction of looking directly at him.

“Okay, fine. _I_ didn’t. But Dimitri did.”

The words break something in him, and he turns to glare at Sylvain full-force, despite his earlier pact to do exactly the opposite. “Get in. We’re not having this conversation outside.”

Once they cross the threshold, Felix tosses his bag on the floor and makes for the kitchen. There’s not a chance in hell he’s having this conversation sober.

The place is too big for one person, but his father had insisted. He never wants his children to live in anything less than opulence, to forget that which they have been graciously given, the silver spoon in their mouths from the day they were born.

Felix slams back a double shot of whiskey without batting a lash, pouring three more fingers for himself on the rocks. With the alcohol warm in his belly, he offers some to Sylvain, sure that the redhead will enjoy the vintage. “Explain.”

Luckily for both of them, Sylvain is not shy. “I’ve been sleeping with his highness for a couple months. It isn’t serious. We’re not exclusive.”

He snorts for two reasons. First, because that much is obvious—he doesn’t think Sylvain has it in him to be exclusive to one person for the rest of his life. Second, because Dimitri hates being called that, and it’s funny, that he and Sylvain seem to use the moniker so often when he’s not around.

“You know how he was, after everything.” He and Felix do not use the word kidnapping lightly, and there’s no cause to start now. Sylvain lifts the glass to his lips, taking an appreciative sip before he goes on. “We figured out a method to keep him safe, but he’s been getting especially restless lately, so I’ve been conducting an experiment.”

Wrath rises easily in Felix’s chest, a white-hot coal in the embers. “If you tell me that you’ve been toying with him like all of those women, Sylvain—”

“I’m _not_ ,” Sylvain hisses, the hurt in his eyes a visceral thing. Felix sits back down from where he’d involuntary risen to shout, guzzling more whiskey to numb the sensations. “You know me. I wouldn’t do that, Felix.”

 _Not to him_. Felix hears the words etched into the silence like they’ve tumbled from Sylvain’s lips. “Go on.”

“If I leave him to his own devices, he’ll hurt himself, chasing the sick thrill of it all,” Sylvain says. Felix finds himself inclined to agree. His words hold even more weight, now that Felix thinks about it, what with Sylvain’s firsthand experience of how addiction could ruin a life. “I thought it would help, being gentle with him.”

The nauseous feeling returns to Felix’s stomach, but this time, at least, he can partially blame it on the whiskey. “He seemed to enjoy it well enough,” Felix mutters, lips curled up in bitter amusement.

“It’s not the _same_ , Felix,” Sylvain heatedly remarks, refilling his glass with a copious amount of liquor. “I’m not. He doesn’t.” He pauses, putting his head in his hands. “He needs you.”

Felix is starting to get hazy, so he laughs. “How could he _need me_ when you didn’t even _want_ me there?”

“I didn’t want you to find out because I know how you feel about Dimitri,” Sylvain says, and the words make Felix’s shoulders tense. “I knew there’d be no room for me, once you knew.” Pitifully, he smiles up at the brunette. “I was being selfish.”

Felix cradles his glass in his hand, the silence deafening around them. “I don’t. Know how I feel about him.”

Sylvain scoffs. “You’ve been avoiding the shit out of us since then. Don’t play dumb with me.”

Chilly maroon eyes narrow. “I walked in on my two oldest friends having sex at nine in the morning. How was I supposed to react?”

At that, the redhead winces. “Okay, fair point.”

Felix sighs. “Everyone likes you, Sylvain.” Sylvain frowns, but Felix presses on, words starting to slur together. “I mean it. Dimitri wouldn’t have let you…” He trails off, decidedly embarrassed about admitting the truth of the matter aloud, even as he begins to grow tipsy. “You were there with him, when it happened, and I wasn’t. We both did what we thought was best for him, and maybe my best wasn’t enough.”

“That’s not true.”

“Maybe it’s not, but I’d never fucking know otherwise,” Felix says, self-loathing thick in his speech. “Dimitri won’t let me in. He’d rather fester in his own rage until it’s too late for me to do anything, and I hate it.” He grows quiet, thumb dragging across the glass, his eyes falling closed. “I miss him,” Felix admits, the words coming out in a near-whisper.

Sylvain exhales heavily, fixing Felix with a wry smile. “You know, sometimes I envy how brutally honest you can be.”

Felix kicks him in the shin, but he doesn’t put much force behind the blow. “If you stopped trying so hard to get your dick wet at any given opportunity, I could teach you a thing or two.”

* * *

Dimitri, who is over six feet tall and who has the body of a swimmer—wide shoulders, tiny waist and all—seems desperately meek when Sylvain and Felix enter his apartment, toying at the hem of his ratty t-shirt. He trips all over himself, nearly breaking his coffee pot in half with his bare hands as he tries to get the machine started. Dedue offers to help, but Dimitri politely asks his bodyguard to keep watch in the living room, if you please, and Dedue obediently pads off to mind his own business.

Felix begins to lend credibility to Sylvain’s harebrained idea about his _feelings for Dimitri_ , because if he were sane, he wouldn’t find the brute adorable, not when one of his hands could almost splay across the entire expanse of Felix’s back.

Dimitri cracks the mugs when he sets them down nervously for Sylvain and Felix. “Er, apologies,” he mumbles, cheeks flamed red. He looks innocent in a way he hasn’t looked in years, aiming for composure and missing by a mile.

Felix decides that his life is over, because he is kind of definitely lusting after Dimitri’s boneheaded clumsiness.

Sylvain claps, and Felix wants to stab him. He doesn’t know how the redhead bounced back from being blackout drunk just hours before, but here they are, and he still feels like shit. Sylvain drinks his coffee black while it’s scalding hot because he has no soul, uncaring that that he has to cup his hand around the brim of the cup, the handle rattled off somewhere on the kitchen tile. “Well boys, I hereby call this meeting to order. The topic of the hour is how we’ll manage to do the three-way tango together since we’re all terrible at talking about our feelings.”

Felix and Dimitri groan in unison. They share a glance, and Felix knows then that Dimitri will help him bury the body when they finally decide to put Sylvain out of his misery as a favor to the rest of the world.

“No takers? Fine, I’ll go first.” Just as well. Felix and Dimitri are stiff in their seats, and Sylvain _is_ the most experienced in matters of the bedroom. “Dimitri, I think you should tell us just what it is you think you’re doing, playing vigilante on the streets.”

The cutting edge to his words startles both of them, but Felix is certainly impressed. Anyone with half a brain cell would notice that Sylvain is much more intelligent than he pretends to be, playing the part of the lustful jester to stave off the echoes of trauma and depression.

The air in the apartment grows cold, Dimitri defensively curling his fingers into fists in his lap. “Sylvain,” he says, his tone commanding, dismissive.

“No, he’s right,” Felix interjects before Dimitri can recede, can pull back and think they’ll let him get away with it. “You’ve had a screw loose since that day, and we need to know what the fuck we can do for you before anything else. If you don’t tell us, we can’t help you, and we can’t keep all this shit hidden for long.” He folds his arms over his chest, punctuating his point with a sharp stare. “My father has his suspicions,” he divulges, making Sylvain and Dimitri whip their heads around to stare at him in blind panic. Felix placatingly holds up a hand. “He doesn’t know any details. There are only rumors for now, but they know something’s up with Dimitri all the way up to the board.”

Rodrigue might be a terrible father, but Felix would never accuse him of being a fool.

Dimitri folds his hands in his lap. “I had to do _something_ ,” he explains, word tumbling out of him in a rush, uncapping the powder keg that is the nightmare of his thoughts. “Injustices, everywhere. Against Sylvain. Against _you_.”

Dimitri’s voice is emphatically venomous, his lone blue eye stony and hard.

“I couldn’t stand it. It was like everything wrong with the world was banging on my windows, demanding that I act. My fists flew before I knew it, and I would hit my opponents long after I’d won the fights.” He closes his eye, willing the anger to simmer down, to creep back below the surface, but he’s already come this far. What’s a little more divulgence? “I tried _everything_ to drown the voices out, you know. Drugs, alcohol, dragging a knife across my wrist.”

They know. They’d nursed him back to health instead of taking him to the hospital in all of those incidences, trying to avoid a scandal besmirching the Blaiddyd scion’s honor at all costs.

“I was so angry. I swam until the coach had to pull me from the pool by force. I nearly bit the fingers off everyone else on the team, and I got suspended for a month on bad behavior. These last seven years haven’t been pretty, but when I got to college, out from under my father’s watchful eye, something in me snapped. I had an outlet, for a while. Even I can see I’ve gone too far, despite my ever-present madness, but I didn’t know what else to do.” Weakly, Dimitri finishes with a watery smile. “It is so difficult to know what, or who, you can trust, when your mind is so set on playing tricks.”

Wisely, Felix does not comment that Dimitri is within his rights to be paranoid when Sylvain’s _brother_ , once a trusted member of the Blaiddyds’ inner circle, had picked the guileless pair of them up from school and nearly killed them.

“I offered an alternative treatment,” Sylvain says, breaking the dark mood with his joviality, as he is often wont to do. “I still suggested therapy, of course, if he ever feels ready to give that a go, but there’s nothing wrong with trying a carnal remedy first.” The redhead waggles his eyebrows. Felix rolls his eyes.

Still, Felix takes the cue for what it is. “I’m not against it,” he says, huffing the words out under his breath. “You’re hopeless and stupid, and more likely to break a bed than to sleep in it, but.” He pauses for a moment, taking in the way Dimitri is fussing with his lip, desperately angling for Felix’s approval. “I think it might be good for you to be. Taken care of.”

Sylvain beams. “Are you offering to spoil his highness, Felix?”

Felix ruthlessly jabs his hand into Sylvain’s gut, delighting in the way it makes him wheeze. “Don’t test me, Gautier. I _will_ end you one day, mark my words.”

Predictably, Dimitri pouts. “You know I don’t like it when you call me that.”

Sylvain gets up to poke him in the chest even though he’s still in pain. “That’s because it rings true, but a real prince would probably be more ashamed of being so excited to take it up the ass.”

Dimitri sputters tellingly. Felix snickers from the sidelines.

The redhead claps his hands once more. “Great. Meeting adjourned. Reconvene in Dimitri’s room in fifteen minutes, where we can further discuss the specifics of this unholy trinity.”

The blonde blows his bangs out of his face. “Must you persist in being so…”

“Annoying?” Felix offers.

“Annoying,” Dimitri agrees, sharing a wry smile with him, breaking from the procedures of his goody-two shoes past.

At that, Sylvain whines, claiming that Felix is ruining Dimitri’s life.

* * *

As it turns out, when there are actual _feelings_ on the line, Felix is better equipped to handle the situation than Sylvain is. He pulls off his shirt without fanfare as the other two gawk at him, raising an eyebrow in disdain. “Do you two have sex in your clothes?” It’s a rhetorical question, because they’d certainly been naked when he caught them having a romp last month.

He’s likely the least experienced of the bunch, with a handful of mindless groping sessions under his belt and an awful blowjob or two, but the trick to anything in life is to fake confidence until the confidence becomes real. That, and to be a good listener, to ask many questions.

Felix is well-experienced in reading the room.

Dimitri is the next to pull off his jeans, and, for the first time, Felix gets to take in the sight of him. Is _allowed_ to; encouraged, even.

He’s big all over. “Bastard,” Felix mumbles, and Dimitri can’t help smiling at the thinly-veiled compliment. Felix still remembers Sylvain’s teasing words from earlier though, about how Dimitri gets off on being on the bottom, and it makes him shudder to think about. Dimitri, every inch the specimen of an alpha male, strong and strapping, classically handsome, eager to have someone take him to task in this way.

Sylvain leers at the way Felix grows stiff, exposed for the both of them to see. “Getting started without us, hmm?” He reaches for lube and condoms. The products look _expensive_.

Felix levels the redhead with a disdainful glance. “Designer shit for sex? Are you serious?”

“I take divine pleasure in using money from the Gautier fortune for things I’m probably not supposed to have,” Sylvain explains, his voice lilting in a sing-song manner. “Nothing but the best for my boys.”

Something primal in Felix curls up hot and flustered at the sound of that. “Who says we’re yours?”

Dimitri hides a laugh behind his hand, a familiar old habit. “Who says we’re not?”

To get things started, Sylvain encourages Felix to map Dimitri out. “He likes having his nipples pinched,” he helpfully offers, and Felix tells him to be quiet unless he wants his balls to go missing in the middle of the night.

Felix’s touch is mostly exploratory at first, but he’s not bashful. He digs his nails in as he scrapes down the corded muscles of Dimitri’s powerful thighs, hums as he basks in the musk of him where his dick is waiting on a bed of blonde-brown curls, growing thick under Felix’s single-minded attention.

He licks the space under Dimitri’s left pec, aiming for his ribs to see if Dimitri’s ticklish. His skin is blemished from old scars, but he still retains feeling there, and he does let out a breathless little giggle at the motion.

Felix thought he would be able to maintain his composure, but he had been so woefully wrong.

He gives up on playing nice, on treating Dimitri with care. He climbs on top of him, rolls the plush curve of his ass down on Dimitri’s fat, if not quite completely hard, cock, and he stares at Dimitri’s parted red lips, hungry for more. He kisses Dimitri until he’s gasping for air, tucking dark hair out of his face as he bites Dimitri’s neck and, damn Sylvain, pinches Dimitri’s nipple hard enough to make the blonde buck, wringing a wretched moan out of him. “Is it true,” Felix asks, “that you like to be on the bottom?”

Dimitri nods a little, breath hitching.

Felix tugs at his hair, making Dimitri whine. “Use your words,” he says, rolling his weight back until Dimitri’s lone pupil blows wide with lust.

“Yes,” he growls, voice crackling with heat. “I do.”

Felix nods then, letting off a bit. “Alright. Get on your knees, then. You’ll tell us if it gets to be too much, won’t you?” Dimitri nods again, and Felix tilts his head back by a fistful of blonde hair. “ _Won’t you_?”

Dimitri makes a noise that’s part sob and part amazingly-aroused moan. “ _Yes_ , Felix.”

Sylvain sneaks down into the space between Dimitri’s corded arms, lube already glistening on his condom. “Sorry,” he sheepishly apologizes, shimmying downward. “Couldn’t resist.”

Felix understands. If he had been in Sylvain’s place, he wouldn’t have been able to keep from pulling at himself either, restless with the heat of it. Now that he’s past the anger of seeing them together that first time, he idly wishes he’d been able to spectate, to see how they have sex without him.

It’s voyeuristic, a fetish he never thought he would entertain, and the thought makes him reach down to cradle his shaft. Something to bring up to them another time.

Felix slicks up his fingers when Sylvain passes him the bottle. “Should I eat you out first?”

Dimitri sob-moans again, desperately shaking his head. Sylvain reaches down to cradle Dimitri’s jaw, his touch as tender as it is sly. “Felix likes it when you talk to him.”

“Too much,” Dimitri says, and when Felix takes a closer look at him, he realizes that Dimitri’s shivering, quaking with the desire to satisfy the two of them. “Please, I can’t stand the—the _waiting_.”

 _We’ve already waited long enough_ , he practically says, his own cock luridly strained against Sylvain’s calf.

He sinks his index finger into Dimitri slowly, the tight heat of him making Felix lick his lips. “Go on, then. Show Sylvain how much you want to take both of us at the same time.” Felix hadn’t even known he could be so filthy. It’s amazing, what they bring out in him, unable to stop now that the floodgates are open.

Dimitri makes a pitiful noise as he lowers himself, fingers slipping all over Sylvain’s shaft. It takes a few false starts for him to gain a rhythm, set off-kilter by the pressure of Felix’s fencing-calloused fingers spreading him open slowly, taking his time watching Dimitri fall apart.

He’s real and he’s _here_ with them, in this moment, too focused on chasing his pleasure to worry about the nightmares. That, more than anything, sets Felix’s heart on fire, determined to make this good for him.

“Please,” Dimitri begs, breath hot against Sylvain’s cock as he bows his back, picture-perfect muscles shifting below his skin. “Felix, _please_.”

“Alright, alright,” Felix accepts, about ready to blow his load himself. He glances over Dimitri’s shoulder to see Sylvain, sweating and bright-eyed, something that looks suspiciously like precome leaking out of his condom.

It’s good to know that they’re all so far gone.

Felix waits for Dimitri to get a comfortable angle with Sylvain, humming and making the redhead’s toes curl with the sensation of his muffled signal. He slides in carefully, inch-by-inch, cheeks puffed with the effort of trying not to drive home in one stroke.

Dimitri sobs against Sylvain, the pressure of Felix sinking into him forcing the redhead’s dick further down his throat. Sylvain asks if Dimitri is still okay, running his fingers through the blonde’s hair, and he nods as best he can, refusing to remove his lips from Sylvain’s cock.

Fuck, but it looks so good, the view of Dimitri struggling to hold it together, choking on Sylvain and getting his prostate stimulated at the same time, a howling, wild thing trapped between two idiots that accept him for what he is. Felix can barely scrap together the wherewithal to tug at Dimitri, practically folded in half for them, drool dripping down Sylvain’s taut balls.

“Dimitri,” Felix groans, bottoming out in him again and again, eyelids fluttering with the euphoria of it all. “Sylvain,” he adds, reaching for Dimitri’s hand, asking for the other man to place his there as well, a symbolic gesture more than anything.

The three of them squeeze, and Dimitri pulls his mouth off of Sylvain to groan, low and broken, shooting come all over Sylvain’s chest and legs. When Felix comes, arms tight around Dimitri’s middle, it’s no less guttural, but he notes, absently, that Dimitri came _a lot_. Like, way more than he’s ever come in his life.

 _Hot_ , his lizard-brain thinks, and he’s in no mood to argue with that.

Sylvain isn’t far behind them, but he’s used to being a tactile lover, knowing how to make it last for any partner he graces with his presence in the bedroom. He savors the image of Dimitri beginning to keel over, boneless from taking him and Felix at the same time. Absently, he realizes he’s going to be jerking off to the memory for weeks to come, or at least until it’s been written over with something new, more titillating.

Felix and Sylvain share the task of cleaning up, mostly because Dimitri’s drifting off. He whines when they move, but he doesn’t have the energy to chase them, lying blissed out and sleepy on the bed.

“You know,” Sylvain says, “I think we can make this work.”

Felix smirks. “Funnily enough, I was just about to say the same thing.”

* * *

Dimitri wakes up after that, figuratively.

He makes an appointment to see his father, to apologize for his gross misconduct. He makes the effort of going to apologize to the students he’d terrorized, bringing them gifts as peace offerings, and, of course, lots and lots of cash.

People change their tunes pretty quickly when there’s several grand on the line.

He doesn’t get _better_ , per se—there’s no cure for deadly intrusive thoughts—but he does brighten up by a landslide. By the end of junior year, he’s a changed man, leaps and bounds away from the pitiful creature he’d been before the three of them had cemented their relationship.

But. He does find something he likes, a lot. It helps.

His enjoyment of the sex is obvious. Felix and Sylvain pamper him absolutely stupid in bed, and when he doesn’t feel like having sex, they pile on the couch, watching the hideously awful horror movies that Dimitri adores with him. They hold his hands when he wakes up sweating from the nightmares. They talk him down when the going gets especially ugly.

No, it’s not just the everyday ins and outs of their astoundingly well-balanced relationship.

It’s this, Sylvain shamelessly swatting him on the ass in the quad, delighting in the way it makes Dimitri lean forward on his toes, cheeks flushing pink with desire. It’s Felix, barking at him to stop standing there spacing out and to sit on his lap, a demand that he never would’ve expected from his surly old friend if he hadn’t heard it himself, groaning as he asks if he’s not too heavy, _again_. Felix brushes off his concerns without breaking a sweat, watching Sylvain idly hold out a cookie for Dimitri to eat, his amber eyes glittering as the blonde licks the redhead’s fingers clean.

He _likes_ having the fight fucked out of him, he discovers, being treated like he is something precious by the two people who know him best in the world.

When he waxes poetic about it to Dedue, his faithful bodyguard simply hums, secretly ecstatic that Dimitri has found something that makes him happy after all these years, though he keeps the full expanse of his joy to himself. It isn’t his job to be Dimitri’s friend. It’s to keep him safe. Those months when Dimitri had slipped out from under his careful watch had been the most stressful of his life. “I’m happy for you, sir,” he says, and he really, truly means it.

Much later, when Felix finds the courage to speak all of his truths, he comes home to tell his father that he’s switching his major to Information Technology, that perhaps he’ll make the bid for a seat at Dimitri’s table after all. Rodrigue is delighted by the news.

His good humor only lasts so long, because Felix is a contrarian and he loves to kick the hornet’s nest. “If Sylvain is going to be the CFO once Blaiddyd finalizes the Gautier acquisition, then I have to be the CIO,” he explains. “Being the VP won’t mean a goddamn thing if I can’t help keep Dimitri in line.”

Rodrigue wonders how on earth Felix came to such a conclusion, boggled at the break from tradition, but Glenn, who has always been more observant than his father knows, grants his brother a private smile.

Later, he pulls Felix aside. “I’m proud of you, taking the leap. But I swear to you, if I hear a _peep_ about you and Sylvain making a mess in Dimitri’s office when he takes over the company, I will _never_ let you live it down.”

Felix bats his eyelashes up at his sibling, the perfect picture of angelic innocence, or as close as he can manage with the awful smirk on his face. “Scout’s honor.”

Glenn flicks him in the forehead. “You were never a scout.”

“You were, so it still counts.”

That exchange, in a way, marks the dawning of a new era, one where Glenn finally gets to see his baby brother _smile_ , really smile, for the first time since their mother died, and he wouldn’t do anything to take that joy away from him.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!! i really had a blast writing these three, i adore them. ♡♡♡
> 
> →[twitter](https://twitter.com/quillifer) 💓  
> →[tumblr](https://quillifer.tumblr.com/) 💓


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